IU recently announced it will be partnering with ChaCha, and perhaps not renewing it's contract with Google. At the surface, this seemed to be more of a campus wide issue, but it appears that it will impact the library as well. The press release says one of the benefits of the collaboration is "Expanded roles for IU librarians to help with guided inquiry", which appears to mean chat reference. And yet, IU already has a chat reference service. So, is this hype or is this really a substantive change? Only time will tell, but in the meantime, I wonder how involved the university librarian was in this decision. Not that I can tell if the decision is good/bad/indifferent, but given it impacts the work of the library, I hope that it was not something that was decided without the library's input.
Link: IU & ChaCha: Reports of Google's Demise Greatly Exaggerated.
ChaCha combines machine-based searches with human guides, who are available to help narrow searches and answer questions via chat. As part of the deal with IU, the university's librarians will become guides "to help the IU community conduct searches through a live instant message chat interface, identify exactly what information the user is seeking, refine the search for the user, and then display only the most relevant results."
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